Eidos Montreal: we're responsible for Deus Ex boss fights

Deus Ex's boss battles were outsourced to little-known developer Grip Entertainment, and were widely criticised for their frustrating difficulty spikes. They also focused on action gameplay when much of the game encouraged the player to use stealth skills.

"The problem was not the supplier, it was what we did with them," Revolution producer David Anfossi told Edge.

"The boss fights were too much for the team to do internally in the time we had. We totally underestimated the effort to do that correctly. We had to work with an external supplier with that, but the design and everything is from the team at Eidos Montreal."

Anfossi described the boss battles as "forced". "We knew that it would be a weakness for the game," he said, "that we had to make a compromise to deliver it [on] two levels. First, the boss fights were forced, which is not the Deus Ex experience. Second, there is no mix [of] solutions to tackle the boss fights, which is not Deus Ex either.

"We knew that before the release of the game, but there had to be some compromise. It [was] our decision."

The development of the game as a "nightmare", Anfossi said, but he insisted he was happy with the way it turned out.

"It took us two years to do it. At the end I'm very proud of that, the stealth, hacking, social and combat within the game - it's well done, I think. I'm very proud of that because it's difficult to do."

The Deus Ex: Human Revolution downloadable content, The Missing Link, includes a new boss fight made entirely in-house by Eidos Montreal.